Dark Choir

by Paul Melhuish

  Angie woke and knew it was time. The freezing cold room she found herself in had a high ceiling, peeling paintwork and black cobwebs hung far above. The metal door to the room was closed. She was naked, flat on her back on a metal slab. To her right she could see four other slabs and, taking up a whole wall, large drawers with metal doors. She knew where she was. She’d been here when she’d first started working here. This was the mortuary at St. Vincent’s. This is where they took the dead patients for autopsy.

  Her heart rate increased as her breathing came in short gasps. Terror caused her to whimper. Angie tried to move her hands but they’d been chained to the mortuary slab, the length wound around the underside of the table. Angie angled her head to the left and let out a short scream.

  There sat a trolley arrayed with all sorts of surgical instruments. Scalpels, bone saws, large sharp looking cutters, a hammer with a sharp, hooked end.

  She wouldn’t. Surely. This was just to scare her. She’d let her go once she saw how frightened she was.

  A heavy clank shattered the silence, and Angie whimpered in fear when she walked in. The naked victim cried out incoherently as the visitor circled the plinth on which she lay. Angie recognised her. The girl could stand, walk, use her arms and hands now in smooth, coordinated movements, but it was definitely her. The visitor slowly lifted the bone saw from the trolley.

  “Don’t…don’t hurt me.” Tears sprang from Angie’s eyes. “I never meant… I loved you…I always loved you.”

  “Let me out of here you fucking bastards!” screamed Jackie O’Shea, and she hammered against the thick door of the shower room on Blackthorn Ward.

  She was in her nightshirt, a huge Mickey Mouse across her chest. She was wearing the one she’d got from Disneyworld, Florida last summer. She’d gone to bed at nine then woken up here. Fuck knows how they’d brought her here. She looked around the old shower room, the stale light shining in from a streetlamp outside that bled through the grimy window. The walls were covered in dark mold. Paint peeled from the ceiling. The shower heads bent as if bowing in reverence to her, and it was fucking freezing.

  They must have drugged her and bought her here. She didn’t believe any of that shit Angie and the others were going on about. Ghosts or the supernatural or whatever. Someone was fucking about.

  That’s what she told herself. She flashed back to the night she’d seen him emerge from behind her telly. She still had the bruises. The thought of facing him again…

  Jackie banged on the door with renewed vigour. She’d thought about using the window as an exit, but it was too high up. Even if she could get up there, she’d never get her fat arse through it.

  She stopped. There were footsteps on the other side of the door. Once that door was open, whoever was behind it would get it.

  The door violently swung inwards, and she looked him right in the face.

  “Impossible!” she almost whispered, backing away from him, right to the wall. He slammed the door behind him, trapping them.

  “Don’t you fucking come near me,” she screeched, in terror more than defiance. “Don’t you dare!”

  Dennis Gillits woke in darkness but knew instantly where he was.

  He’d been taken from his own electrically powered wheelchair and his obese frame had been stuffed into this little red wheelchair. He was in the gym, the physio room he’d been in so many times with Stephen on so many nights. He knew he wasn’t alone in the room. He could see the pale shape of a person in the depths of the darkness.

  “I know where I am,” he said out loud. “I know what you want.”

  The large figure wheeled a mirror out of the darkness and stood it before him. Gillits was forced to look at his own grotesque form squeezed into the wheelchair, the catheter hanging limply from his penis. His hands had been secured with dark, solid chains to the arms of the wheelchair and the chain wound around the underside of it.

  “You have taken me from my bed. That is kidnapping. That is illegal.”

  A second mirror was placed around him. The tormentor left to fetch a third.

  “I know you have…well…that you want revenge. Stephen. I know it’s you.”

  A third mirror was placed around him, and a fourth.

  Gillits knew it was insane talking to his former patient, but he hoped perhaps he could get through to the chap, get him to show some mercy.

  “Listen. You suffered back then. Yes, I acknowledge that, but I’ve suffered too. I’ve had cancer. I’ve known pain. Now, I’m like you. Disabled.”

  The large figure stopped, his face was in darkness, but Gillits could feel Stephen’s stare, sensed an incredulous irony in his hidden features.

  “Yes, you’re not disabled now. Right at this minute. I don’t know how this is happening but…listen…I’ve learned my lesson. That’s enough, Stephen.”

  He was surrounded by mirrors, all reflecting his absurd position. Stephen emerged from behind the mirrors and stood directly before Gillits. He held an iron bar.

  “Yes, I see myself. I realise how hideous I am.” He looked at the changed Stephen. “You look…different.”

  The condition that had blighted Stephen all his life by deforming his features from birth was now absent. Instead, a shaggy mop of hair crowned a handsome face. A pair of blue eyes and a short nose. Despite the change, Gillits still recognised him. Unfortunately for Gillits, it was still the Stephen he’d tormented at every opportunity. Tonight, the man was unrestrained by disability or deformity. Tonight, the roles had been reversed. Gillits couldn’t begin to understand how this was happening, but he was confronted by the awful reality that it was.

  Stephen regarded him but didn’t speak.

  “What are you going to do? Smash my legs with that iron bar and make me watch myself suffer? Is that it? You think I haven’t learned my lesson, do you?” Gillits leaned forwards in his chair. “The truth is, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed making you try to tear your own eyes out. What sort of subhuman animal hates their own reflection? You deserved to suffer, you deformed little dwarf. If I had my way, I’d snuff you all out at birth. Gas you all, destroy you, you cretins, you degenerates!”

  Stephen’s strong left arm swung backwards and smashed into the first mirror. Shards of broken reflective glass spat out to the floor. Stephen slowly walked around and smashed each mirror out of its frame until Dennis Gillits was encircled by a ring of smashed mirror. Stephen returned to stand before his old tormentor.

  “What does that prove? Eh?” Despite the bravado fear contorted each word that croaked from Gillits’s mouth.

  With one stable movement Stephen crouched, using strong, taut gluteal muscles to support his weight. With deft fingers, fully formed and abducting normally, he took a shard of mirror glass. The sharp point was roughly three inches long.

  “What the hell are you going to do with that?”

  Stephen gave him an incredulous look with his now proportionally placed clear blue eyes. As if Gillits had to ask what was going to happen next. Stephen stepped forwards and grabbed Gillits’s head, keeping it steady. Gillits saw the sharp end of the shard point to his eye, then felt it enter his cheek just below the eye. He felt the glass scrape against his cheekbone.

  With equal slowness, Stephen bent down to retrieve another shard.

  Widdowson entered the chapel. He flicked on the lights, but they didn’t work.

  Ten minutes ago, Gould had rung and told him to meet him here. He’s said he’d found out who was behind the Dark Choir and needed to meet him at the chapel.

  Widdowson strode down the centre aisle. “Gould. Gould, where the hell are you?”

  The chapel side door had been locked, so he assumed Gould had let himself in.

  He stopped suddenly when he spotted the girl. Her pale nakedness was a blur in the gloom, but he could feel her stare even through the darkness.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  She didn’t answer. The side door slammed shut behind him
, making him jump. She stepped down from the raised platform and came closer. With dread, he suddenly recognised her. He stepped back, feeling the palpable threat emanating from her. He raised a hand to placate her, but she didn’t halt her approach.

  “Now wait a minute. Just…wait…listen. I can explain.”

  Forty-One

  The wild, frightening Alison receded and she became the sensible pragmatic woman he’d fallen for again. They hastily dressed and left the house.

  “The adapted car is nearly out of juice,” she said. “Better take the Morris.”

  At first the Morris failed to start, then Dan remembered to pull out the choke. As they drove through the frozen night, mist blurring their path through the fields and the trees, neither of them spoke. Dan was trying to comprehend how Lindsey had vanished and also who might have taken her. Apart from all the supernatural hokum, he prayed to God Widdowson hadn’t taken her somewhere. After what he’d done to Karl, he didn’t put that past him.

  The car skidded on treacherous frozen rivulets of ice that crossed the road and Dan was forced to curb his speed. He sped up again when they saw the lights of New Scarsdale, and Dan managed to cause the speed camera at the edge of the village to flash as he accelerated towards St. Brendan’s.

  Their headlights cut a beam through the mist as they approached the frozen shape of Willow House. The light from the windows struggled to penetrate the thick mist that enveloped the building. Dan skidded as he brought the Morris Traveler to a halt before the unit. Melody was already waiting at the door anxiously wringing her hands together.

  “Mr. Hepworth. I am so glad to see you. I was here on my own and…”

  Alison took her hands. “Are you sure Lindsey is gone? Did anyone come in here, maybe while you were in the clinic doing meds or maybe in the kitchen?”

  “No one has come in.”

  Dan bolted down the corridor to Lindsey’s room. He burst in to see the bed empty, the wheelchair sitting in its usual place. Passive and empty without its owner. He looked in the wardrobe, not that she’d really fit in there, then checked the window. It was firmly locked from the inside. Lindsey seemed to have just vanished

  He crossed the corridor to Stephen’s room. That was empty. He pulled open the door to Shelly’s room. Apart from Stephen, Shelly was the only other resident here who could not walk. Her electrically powered wheelchair sat dead and silent, the bed empty. He checked Greg’s room. Empty. Patrick’s. Empty. Nigel’s. Empty. They were all empty. All of residents were gone.

  “We need to call the police,” Alison said to a now crying Melody.

  “They’re all empty. All of them have been taken.”

  As Melody sobbed in the corner, Alison came close to him and hiss-whispered. “She hasn’t even called the police, not even the nurse on call. She was waiting for us to turn up.”

  “You’re fucking joking.” He turned to Melody. “Who took my sister? You must know?”

  “I know nothing?”

  “I’m going to make some phone calls,” said Alison. “999 for one, then we’ll need to check outside. There have to be some footprints in the frost or something. Car tyre tracks maybe.”

  Alison went to the office and began dialing. He heard her talking urgently but retaining a calm voice, giving details and answering questions.”

  Dan turned to Melody. “You must have seen something? Someone hanging around?”

  “I didn’t see anything. I saw Lindsey was gone and rang you straight away.”

  “And the others? Where have they gone? They couldn’t have just walked out of here. Have you seen anything?”

  “Seen, no. But heard. I heard them whispering at night, talking, and I heard …”

  Beyond the windows a chorus of disharmonious voices rose from the guts of the old asylum.

  “That…I heard that! The Devil’s songs!”

  Alison bolted out of the office. She opened the door and the screeched utterances could be heard more clearly. Many voices raised in awful unity. The ghost choir, or as Pendred had called them, the Dark Choir.

  “St. Vincent’s!” Alison gasped. “It’s coming from St. Vincent’s.” She spun back to face Dan. “Daniel, I know where Lindsey is.”

  “There? You think she’s in there, with them?”

  “I think they all are. I don’t know what’s going on, but I think Lindsey is in there. We have to get to her before they harm her.”

  All kinds of awful scenarios filled his mind. Human sacrifice, rituals undertaken by some kind of cult. What were they doing to his sister and the others in there? They’d taken them, this Dark Choir cult and were now…well…he didn’t know what to think.

  “Melody,” snapped Alison, “wait here. Tell the police where we’ve gone. Dan, come on.”

  Dan bolted past Alison and together, they drove up to the hole in the fence where they’d entered a few days ago. Abandoning the car, he darted thorough the wet, thin trunks of trees and bushes until he emerged in the clearing before the main entrance.

  The singing was louder now, clearer. He could make out words. Was that Latin? He didn’t have time to try and work it out. Alison caught up with him.

  “I just hope the entrance hasn’t been boarded up,” he said.

  “Or that they’ve locked it from the inside.”

  Dan was fighting the terrible anticipation of what he was about to encounter in there. Images of hooded figures bearing torches flashed through his mind. Or maybe Connor Pendred and his cronies had escaped and taken over.

  He pulled the big arched door and it squeaked open on its hinges. It took a second or two for his eyes to get accustomed to the gloom. He made out the steps leading up and the corridor ahead that led to the hall he’d visited before with Alison, Lindsey, and Stephen. They’d be there, he knew it. He’d tell them to get the fuck away from his sister, he’d…. he’d… Dan didn’t know what he’d do. He just knew he had to get to Lindsey.

  The singing seemed to wind down to a somber, if disjointed, minor scale.

  Dan entered the building, his footsteps echoing up to the high ceiling above. He passed the open, heavy security door, inadvertently brushing away flakes of peeling magnolia paint as he did so. The heavy wooden door stuck fast to the floor under grit and broken concrete. He crossed the threshold into the corridor.

  “Daniel!” Alison cried out, and he stopped. She was still in the reception area beyond the threshold of the door. “I lied to you.”

  Dan felt his mind distort briefly as her words sank in. He could tell by the way she stood and the heavy look in her eyes that the Alison he distrusted had emerged again.

  “What the fuck are you talking about? I haven’t got time for this. My sister’s in there.”

  “No, Dan. Your sister is in the chapel back in Scarsdale. I’ll leave you the car. The keys will be in the ignition. I didn’t call the police either. No one is coming.”

  “Have you lost your fucking mind?”

  “The truth is, Daniel, you need to be here. You always needed to be here. You’ve been chosen as the witness.”

  “The witness to what?”

  “To the work of the Dark Choir. You’ve been chosen to hear the Dark Choir sing and to see, with your own eyes, the terrible retribution the pitiless bastards of this world will suffer. Retribution meted out by the wronged, innocent souls. I’m sorry, but this has to be.”

  With supernatural force the door between them slammed shut, sealing itself into the doorframe. Through the grimy window Dan watched Alison turn and disappear through the arched door. He shook the handle, screamed, kicked, but the door wouldn’t budge.

  He had to get to the chapel. Had to get to Lindsey. Dan would have to find a way out. Behind him, up ahead in the corridor, the choir began to sing again.

  Forty-Two

  Ten, maybe fifteen feet away, down the corridor, the Dark Choir contaminated the night with their song. Dan inched towards the strange dirty vanilla light which
emanated from the old concert hall. This was the only light source here. Beyond the wide, square entrance to the hall, the singers started their song again.

  Dan was looking for a way out. He had to keep his head clear if he wanted to survive this, suppress the panic and terror which was a hair’s breath away from totally overwhelming him. He knew that to the right a door opened to a flight of stairs that led upwards. He’d seen it when he’d last been here. He would be passing dangerously close to the entrance to the hall but he could be up those steps and away from here. Out of a second-floor window and then shimmy down a drainpipe. He had to get out. Now he slowly inched along the wall towards his escape.

  The shock of Alison’s confession still smarted like a slap to the face. He’d trusted her, utterly. She’d hoodwinked him and he’d fallen for it. He still couldn’t quite believe she was part of this Dark Choir, whatever it really was. Thinking back, she’d not been that shocked to hear about the attacks on Beverly or Widdowson. She’d not been too frightened by his recounting of how the purple-robed man had entered the house that night. Maybe she’d actually attacked Widdowson and Beverly herself, but Dan doubted it.

  You’ve been chosen as the witness. What the fuck did that mean? Whatever it meant, she was part of this messed up cult of hidden people and she’d positioned and manipulated him, even to the point where they’d become lovers, to bring him here tonight. It was obvious she knew Lindsey would go missing tonight. That’s why she’d used sex to keep him at the house, knowing the phone would ring. She knew where they’d taken Lindsey. To the chapel. Dan had to get to the chapel. He had to get to his sister.

  The atonal wailing wasn’t just unpleasant to listen to. This close he could feel a nausea rising from the pit of his stomach. With each vibrato and staccato his muscles and joints reverberated with subsonic tension.